More than 70 people have been killed in three assaults amid other reported incidents of violence in Balochistan province in southwestern Pakistan.
The country’s military said 14 soldiers and police, and 21 militants, were killed in fighting after the largest of the attacks, which targeted vehicles on a major highway. But it is not immediately clear whether that included 12 militants the interior ministry had separately announced dead.
Local officials said at least 23 passengers were killed in the attack, with 35 vehicles set ablaze.
On the same day, rail traffic with Quetta was suspended following blasts on a rail bridge linking the provincial capital to the rest of Pakistan, as well as on a rail link to neighbouring Iran, railways official Muhammad Kashif said.
Police said they had found six as yet unidentified bodies near the site of the attack on the railway bridge.
The Balochistan province has had a simmering rebellion for years, with several armed groups present. Rights groups have denounced Pakistan’s response to the movement, which they document as including enforced disappearances and other forms of state repression.
The attacks, along the highway that connects to the province of Punjab, came shortly after the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) warned people to stay away from highways in the province.
In a statement, the group said its fighters targeted military personnel travelling in civilian clothes, who were shot once they were identified.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior, however, said the dead were innocent citizens.
“Vehicles travelling to and from Punjab were inspected, and individuals from Punjab were identified and shot,” Najibullah Kakar, a senior official in Musakhail, told media outlets.
The injured were moved to a hospital in Dera Ghazi Khan, the nearest large medical facility.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in separate statements called the Musakhail attack “barbaric” and pledged that the attackers would not get away with it.
Uzma Bukhari, a spokesperson for the Punjab provincial government, denounced the assaults as “a matter of grave concern” and called on the Balochistan provincial government to “step up efforts to eliminate BLA terrorists”.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti also promised that the attackers would be brought to justice.
According to local media, 12 rebel fighters were killed by security forces throughout the province in the past 24 hours.
Similar past attacks in Balochistan have been claimed by the BLA, such as the killing of seven barbers in Gwadar in May, or the April killings of several people abducted from a highway.
Armed groups like the BLA in the resource-rich but otherwise impoverished province have secessionist aims, often targeting labourers from Punjab coming to the area to work.
(with agency inputs)
